Out Every Night: The Best Shows From August 13 to 19

LouFest is this weekend, but you will not find it listed within this post. This is because St. Louis's favorite outdoor festival will already see plenty of press this week -- hell, I'd be surprised if this blog post isn't surrounded on either side by bigass advertisements for the event. Point is, you know about LouFest. Here's some other shows this week, including some non-LouFest weekend picks for those reading that aren't interested in getting weekend-festy.

Texas troubadour Lyle Lovett will be at the Peabody this Saturday; that's one apt non-fest pick for the picky. Legendary hardcore party-starters Murphy's Law will play Fubar on Saturday as well. I'm not sure that there's much crossover between crowds for this and for the fest, but then too I suppose I am conflicted over which I will personally attend, so maybe there is. Oh yeah, and there's shows this week that aren't on the weekend, too -- click through and see all of our picks below.

Vektor
Mon., 9:00 p.m. August 20
w/ Black Fast, Rites of Impiety
@ The Firebird - $10By Daniel Hill
Vektor formed in 2004 in Tempe, Arizona and established itself quickly as a force to be reckoned with within the new wave of thrash movement. Relentless regional touring earned the band a loyal local following; its melding of progressive influences with lighting-quick ultra-technical thrash set it apart from the cookie-cutter bands of the genre. New York's Heavy Artillery Records picked up the band in 2009 and released its subsequent Black Future and Outer Isolation LPs. The recent acquisition of Heavy Artillery by Earache Records could prove very advantageous for the up-and-coming band, provided that the latter label doesn't choose to cannibalize the former. Either way, Vektor certainly has enough talent to land on its feet. Bang Your Head Until It Falls Off: Opening the show is local act Black Fast -- the RFT's Best Metal Band of 2012. You'd be wise to show up early.

Kim Massie
Tues., 10:00 p.m. August 21
@ Beale on Broadway - $7By Annie Zaleski
Although the word "diva" is so overused it's almost a useless descriptor, Kim Massie is one vocalist who deserves the honor. With its brash, gospel-influenced strains of vibrato, Massie's voice can be as big and broad as Aretha Franklin's, but it contains just enough Etta James-ian blues to undercut this strength with sorrow. When Massie sings the standard "At Last," you can close your eyes and imagine her voice as a vocal preacher, laying down the lyrics like audible commandments, just as easily as you can imagine the sound slinking down a smoky stage moonlit by a lonely spotlight. Massie is always -- and effortlessly somehow -- magical, spiritual and glowing.

Susan Cowsill
Wed., 8:00 p.m. August 22
w/ Brian Henneman
@ Off Broadway - $12/$15By Roy Kasten
The most remarkable quality of Susan Cowsill's 40-plus-year career is its sanity. A child performer with the Cowsills -- the fabled Partridge Family-inspiring clan band -- Susan Cowsill should have burned out or flipped out, sunk into kitsch or nostalgia or just faded away like so many other bubblegum, one-pop wonders. Instead, she's just gone on singing with that ineffable tone -- part country, part pop, all soul -- and patiently releasing solo records steeped in the spirit of her home, New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina took much of what she loved, including her brother Barry. But her poignant take on rock and soul is never mournful, even at its most elegiac, as on the song "Crescent City Sneaux." She's a survivor who knows what to do with her musical gifts: share them with her audience with joy.

David Sanborn
Thurs., 8:00 p.m. August 23
w/ Brian Culbertson
@ The Pageant - $35-$75By Kiernan Maletsky
St. Louis' prodigal saxophone son makes a rare hometown appearance. Last year, he played at a much smaller venue as part of a trio, but this time he'll share the big stage at the Pageant with Brian Culbertson. We'll get a chance to hear Sanborn pull from his pioneering solo catalogue, one that has helped define jazz and its place in pop music in the past quarter century. If our recommendation doesn't do it for you, take the word of a few musicians who have entrusted him in the studio over the years: David Bowie, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, the Grateful Dead, Steely Dan and James Brown, just to name a few. The Oscar Pistorius Award: It's a well-known nugget but one of our favorites: Sanborn started playing the saxophone in order to strengthen his Polio-weakened lungs.

Official LouFest Pre-Party w/ Cotton Mather
Fri., 8:30 p.m. August 24
@ Off Broadway - $8/$11By Annie Zaleski
The Austin power-pop band Cotton Mather was championed by Oasis thanks to 1997's Kon Tiki. This song is from that album; yes, it came out in the late 1990s, and not, say, England in the late 1970s. Like any classic power-pop song, the tune is devoid of signifiers of any certain area. Cotton Mather released a smattering of EPs, singles and three albums, but split in 2003. Its reunion for this year's South By Southwest is apparently ongoing, despite having supposedly been planned as a one-time thing